


Raging Storm

by jdphoenix



Series: paradigm shift [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Berserker Thor, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor knows the moment he touches the hammer that it is not Mjolnir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raging Storm

**Author's Note:**

> You do not have to read "Paradigm Shift" to understand this but that one might be slightly less enjoyable if you read this first.

Thor knows the moment he touches the hammer that it is not Mjolnir.

"Loki," he breathes, a warning to the others that magical mischief is afoot. There is no time for more as Thor is forced to his knees beneath the tumult of emotions.

He has never felt this anguish but he knows enough of his history to recognize the effects of a berserker weapon. It draws up his worst memories and nightmares, opening anew wounds long-since closed and pouring salt in those that are still fresh. Silly, childish grievances - such as his petty rage when Sif first bested him in the training yard - bring him no less pain than true suffering - the loss of Mjolnir, the hours when he thought his father dead, and mother…

There is more, so much more. He has lived a long life and was often quick to anger. It comes at him in wave upon wave, with the constant urging that if only he were to lash out at those around him, it would ease his hurts. The false hammer in his hand begs to be used. It is not alive in the way Mjolnir is, but its urgings are no less forceful.

"Thor." Steve touches his shoulder.

It is only with supreme effort that Thor turns his move to strike into a falling away. He lands heavily on his hip, the hammer still in his hand. He thinks, perhaps, he cannot let it go.

Steve has backed away, shield at the ready in the event Thor lashes out. He has always been a smart man.

The others have taken up similar postures around him. He cannot relieve their worries but he should at the least tell them what is happening to him, best as he understands it. All he can manage though, is to gasp like a landed fish as a fresh assault overwhelms his senses.

This is not like the first. It is not simple memory but a reliving of his worst moments. He feels the burn of Asgardian air after the icy fogs of Jotunheim; tastes blood welling up from his lungs as his mortal body struggles to breathe; sees Jane lying on the ground, still as death in the wake of the Aether's attack. There is a sound in his ears like an animal keening.

"Thor, come on." Bruce. Returned to his weaker form no doubt to offer medicinal aid should Thor require it. Better he had remained as he was. "You're really starting to scare Clint, buddy. Talk to us."

Clint mutters something, some defense, but it is lost to Thor's ears. At some point he rolled to his hands and knees. Gravel digs into the palm of his free hand while the hammer is still stuck fast to his other.

" _Thor_." Bruce's voice is gentle, soothing. It is not enough to calm Thor when in his mind he cannot stop the sound of screams.

He must try to explain before the rage overwhelms him and he can do nothing but fight - fight his friends until either he dies or they do. For that must be Loki's scheme in binding the hammer to him. He lifts the hammer and slams it into the already cracked asphalt ( _by the tree_ , but even that small release of aggression is a relief) and uses the leverage to pull himself to his knees. He grips Bruce's shoulder. A mistake, to be sure. The smaller man's eyes turn a deep green and beyond the screams Thor hears Tony's weapons readying to fire.

But now Thor remembers fighting with the Hulk and, beneath the rush of battle, the plans Tony and Bruce carefully constructed to contain the behemoth.

"The Cage," Thor says. His voice twists in pain - from memory, from the effort to hold himself back. "Take me to the Cage.  _Now_."

He barely utters the last word before Bruce is gone, replaced by his other half, and they go flying.

 

* * *

 

"What do you mean, 'he's in the Hulk Cage'?"

Jane is seriously impressed with how calm her voice sounds right now. She kind of sounds like she's on the verge of demanding a department store manager, but since her natural response to Tasha's news was somewhere along the lines of  _yell at every Avenger in existence_ , she's proud she's managing to reign it in.

"I thought the point of the Cage was to put Hulk in there  _by himself_ ," she adds. She's definitely gonna yell at Tony over this. Or at least get Pepper to yell at Tony for her. That might be better, actually….

"Oh, Bruce isn't in there with him."

If that's supposed to make Jane feel better, it's really not. She also hasn't missed the way Tasha hasn't taken her eyes off the road once since they started driving. It's not raining nearly hard enough for someone with Tasha's skills to be  _this_  vigilant.

Jane is really regretting giving Darcy the week off to introduce Ian to her parents. Darcy would be demanding answers, not sitting here dreading them.

"How bad is it?" she asks finally.

"We don't know." And Tasha tells her. About the seemingly aimless attack on the Tower, about the too easy victory, about Thor's … whatever.

"He said it was Loki?"

"Yeah. Said it the first time. Once we got him in the Cage though … mostly he just yells."

"Yells?"

"A lot."

Hail peppers the windshield and a crack of thunder sounds almost overhead. They're nearly to the Cage site.

"Forecast didn't call for rain today," Jane says softly.

"Nope," Tasha agrees. They round the last bend and the road drops out ahead of them. They've reached the Cage.

Tasha parks and for several long moments they both just sit and stare through the wind and rain and fog. The Cage sits at the bottom of a large dip in the landscape - "to keep outside stimuli to a minimum," Bruce said when they were scouting locations - and looks almost like a golf ball sitting on a green. It's made of the same material that held Loki prisoner on the helicarrier. There's still some question of whether it can actually hold the Hulk, but Jane's almost certain it can hold Thor. Almost.

"We thought, whatever it is, you should be here," Tasha says gently.

That does not make Jane feel even a little better. She pushes open her door to head down. Beneath the sounds of the storm, she can just hear a distant, metallic echo and the sound of a voice muffled by the wind.

They've got umbrellas but she ends up using hers more as a cane on the slippery slope down. The other Avengers are gathered nearby. It's a relief to see Bruce is his normal self and Tony's stepped out of his armor. If they were really worried, they'd be suited up. Right?

Thor sees her a moment before they do. She knows because the rain instantly lets up for ten feet around her.

"Neat trick," Tasha says, stepping closer.

Overhead the thunder roars and lightning cracks. Tasha steps slowly outside the rainless circle. The storm lightens, if only a little.

Jane makes a beeline for the Cage. The superglass, as Darcy calls it, is fogged but she can see Thor using his cloak to wipe away the condensation for a better view of her. He looks … bad. Worse than when he helped Odin away from Frigga's body. Worse than when he pretended to be defeated on Svartalfheim.

 _At least he's not dying_ , she thinks. She  _hopes_. She'll never forget how pale he looked after the Destroyer knocked him down, how she just knew he wasn't going to make it even as she begged him to stay.

Whatever's happened to him, he doesn't look like that.

"Are you okay?" she asks, and rolls her eyes at the stupid question. Of course he's not okay. No one who asked to be locked up is okay.

"Are  _you_?" he counters. He sounds like his normal self, and she hopes whatever Loki's done has passed. Her hope lasts exactly half a second. "They should not have brought you." Thunder underscores his words and he glares over her head in the direction of the other Avengers. Even though his anger isn't directed at her, it still has her falling back half a step.

Thor catches the movement and presses a hand to the glass, reaching for her. Blood smears with the condensation and more drips down his gauntlet.

" _Thor_ ," she gasps. This time it's her who presses a hand to the glass as if to grab him. "Is that from the battle?" Tasha said it was easy and Thor's always been a quick healer; he should be better by now.

Like a guilty child, his eyes dart over his shoulder, in the direction of his crime. The ground squelches under her feet as she circles around the edge of the Cage. He's calling her name, telling her to stop, to come back to him. Given his current state, she figures she should go on doing the opposite of what he asks.

Maybe a fifth of the way around she finds the first crack. It's spider web thin and she follows its path to the crystalline splatter of broken glass. The Cage is still secure, but it's more than a little disconcerting that when Jane reaches for the center of the damage, she can feel the barest pinprick on the outer side.

A loud, metallic bang sounds. The glass beside Jane's head cracks and she stumbles back. Steve catches her before she can land on her butt in the mud. The others are there too. If they followed her around or came at the sound of the hammer, Jane's not sure, but she's grateful all the same.

Inside the Cage, Thor is staring. His chest heaves with unspent energy and he looks smaller than she's ever seen him. He's afraid of himself. He pulls his eyes up from her to Steve and looks quickly away, retreating to the far side of the enclosure. A moment later, he begins to yell.

"Well, that was progress," Tony says after a long moment.

"Progress?" Jane echoes, again impressed that she manages to keep her voice down. If she yells, Thor might hear.

"That's the first time he's talked since Hulk threw him in there," Clint says. "Up to now it's just been … this." He gestures with his bow.

"Didn't any of you try to talk to him?"

"If you haven't noticed," Tony says, "you've kinda got the advantage of being the only person here he's ever slept with."

" _How about_ ," Steve cuts in sternly, "we back off for a while. Jane can try again after he's had time to yell himself out."

"And until then we can enjoy her circle of dryness," Bruce says, trying to add some levity to the moment. Which is a pretty good indicator of how bad things are, Jane thinks. "Seriously, how are you doing this?"

"He does it," she says absently. She can see Thor's shadow moving on the other side of the fogged glass. "He nearly broke out already. We can't wait."

"Jane," Steve says.

She turns to him. She's faced gods and aliens and things from the dawn of time. She's right about this and she's not about to let anyone, not even Captain America, back her down. With all her experience shutting Darcy up, it's not long before Steve's squirming under the weight of her gaze.

"Just be careful, okay?" he pleads. "When we get him back to normal - and we  _will_  - he's gonna be really mad if you got hurt."

"I know."

There are a few whines - mostly from Tony - when she takes the dry circle with her, but they fade away in the rain and distance as she circles around the Cage.

"Thor?" she calls. She can't see his shadow from this side and begins to worry something else, something  _worse_  has happened. "Thor!"

The shadow of a hand presses against the glass. To the left of it, she sees the shape of the hammer.

"Jane!" Thor calls. The hammer lifts away.

"I'm fine!" she yells before he can bring the weapon down. It falls to the floor with a heavy thunk and Thor follows. He presses himself against the glass, appearing in streaks and smears through the fog.

"You are unhurt?" he asks.

"I'm  _fine_ ," she repeats. "But you're not." She squats as close to him as she can. "Can you tell me what happened?"

He opens his mouth to answer only to close it, his face twisted in pain. He curls in on himself, his sweat-thinned hair falling to hide his hurts from her. The hammer sits awkwardly in his grip as he presses his face to his hands. For the first time, she gets a good look at it.

She's spent months living with Thor and, by extension, his hammer. It gets in her way, takes up her space, and has broken no less than three lamps. She's come to think of it as Thor's more mobile version of a pet rock. So she knows it when she sees it - and she knows when she doesn't.

"That's not Mjolnir, is it?"

Slowly,  _painfully_  slowly, Thor lifts his head. "A ruse," he says, his voice tight with pain she can't understand. He turns his wrist and she sees the way his fingers struggle to pull away from the hilt. "A berserker weapon." He slams the imposter hammer into the ground. "Which is why you must  _leave_. It is not safe, Jane. I cannot be certain of myself while I hold it."

"And you can't let it go," she mutters. She really should have hit Loki harder when they met. Maybe kicked his corpse a few times while he was playing dead. That is one fond memory she could really use right about now.

" _Jane_ ," Thor pleads. " _Go._ "

"I will, but you have to promise me you'll fight this. If I have to be safe, so do you. Deal?"

Thor's smile is cracked and thin, but it's there, which is something. "Deal."

Reluctantly she stands and heads back up the hill to Tasha's car. Tasha and Clint run up to meet her halfway. While they help her make it up without embarrassing herself, she fills them in.

"Well we kind of figured Loki cursed him somehow," Clint says. "If he can't let go of the hammer, what are we supposed to do? Cut off his hand?"

Jane's stomach twists at the memory of Svartalfheim, of the way Loki carelessly sliced off Thor's hand like it was nothing. It was all a lie, but it would be just like Loki to try to make it real now.

"We'll figure something out," Jane says. If the assassins exchange a heavy look, she chooses to ignore it. "He wants me out of the blast zone in case he gets out, so I'm gonna look into a few things. Mind if I borrow your car?"

Tasha hands her the keys. "Call us if you find any leads. Or need Tony to hack his way past any firewalls. This isn't the time to respect other people's research."

Jane can never tell with Tasha. Maybe she genuinely thinks Jane's just going to go research berserkers while her alien boyfriend slowly goes crazy inside a glass prison and floods upstate New York. Or maybe their comms are still on and she doesn't want Steve ordering anyone to stop Jane from doing something actually helpful.

Given that Tasha's a world-class spy, probably the latter.

Between the storm and traffic, the ride back to the city takes well into the night. Jane was up late stargazing with Thor the night before. She barely slept four hours before Tasha was knocking on her door. Thor's had less thanks to the battle and his adrenaline's been up for nearly all that time. A human would probably have died of exhaustion by now. How much can an Asgardian heart take?

She tries not to think about that as she parks around the corner from the site of the battle. There's not much of a night life in this part of the city so she's got the streets mostly to herself; it's not hard to pick out the statue-still figure standing over Mjolnir on the other side of the police tape.

There's no way he can miss her coming so she doesn't bother trying to hide. She shifts the folds of her coat as she ducks under the barrier and the smell of the rain left far behind wafts up around her like a kind of armor. He'd probably laugh if he could read her thoughts. She draws in a deep breath and takes a position in front of him. She doesn't care what he thinks.

"Fix him," she says.

Loki raises one eyebrow but doesn't bother to move other than that.

" _Now_."

"After I went to all the trouble of breaking him? That would be rather pointless, don't you think?"

She wishes she still had some of that strength the Aether gave her. Hitting him would feel  _really_  good right about now.

"Is that seriously what this is about? Breaking your own brother?"

 _That_  gets a reaction out of him. " _He is not my-_ " He catches himself and glares weakly at her. "He is not my brother."

"If I pretend to agree with you, will that get you to fix him?"

Loki's lips slowly pull back into a smile. "And just what else might you be willing to do to save that oaf?"

"What do you want?" she asks, more to keep him talking than anything.

His eyes drop to the hammer between them and his fingers flex.

"You can't lift it." Thor's told her about the whole "being worthy" thing, and then, when she pushed him for further explanation, translated that to Mjolnir granting permission. She wouldn't grant Loki permission to use her bathroom, so she's not really surprised that Mjolnir doesn't want to be lifted by him.

"Mjolnir is unimportant," Loki says, "save to those mortals whose morning commute will be longer because of its presence here."

The obvious question, the "so why are you staring at it?" begs to be asked but she bites it back down. Antagonizing him isn't going to get her what she wants. Playing along will. Or, at the very least, it'll give her time to figure out a way to fix this.

He steps away from the hammer, as if trying to prove his own point, and begins circling her like a buzzard.

"It is a blunt instrument, good for nothing save breaking bone and rock, elevated beyond its station by my brother's valuing of it."

Jane has to fight the urge to shift her shoulders as he passes behind her. She breathes deep and catches the faintest whiff of rain. 

"Thor thinks you intelligent," he says as he comes back around, "yet you smile in the face of danger. I fear you're as much a fool as he is."

Anger - for Thor more than for herself - burns through her and she opens her mouth to defend him, only to be cut off by a flash from the sidewalk. It's a couple of kids, both of them holding phones up to prove they've seen  _the_  Loki.

He flashes her a sharp grin. "Just begging for it, aren't they? Wait here, I'll only be a moment and then we can revisit the subject of just what you're willing to do to save Thor."

He's going to kill them. Or worse. Also he's kind of giving her a huge opening and she's not about to waste it.

She grabs Mjolnir by the handle and heaves. For the first time it actually feels heavy in her hands, but satisfyingly so, like it's capable of doing some serious damage to Loki's skull. Which, conveniently enough, is exactly where she aims.

The force spins him around and he falls like a tree onto the asphalt. She drops the hammer delicately on his chest. From the  _oomph_  he lets out, it's probably a lot heavier for him than it was for her.

Maybe she doesn't miss those lamps so much.

"What?" he gasps, eyes darting between the hammer and her. "How?"

She ignores his questions - the answers are pretty obvious - and digs in her pocket for her phone. "Maybe Thor values things because they're  _valuable_ ," she says tartly. Once she finds the phone, she aims it at him. "Here's the deal: either you fix Thor or I'm going to tweet out your location and the people of New York can pay you back for all the trouble you've caused. I can't be certain, but I'm  _pretty sure_  feces is gonna be involved."

Loki struggles beneath Mjolnir. When it doesn't budge, he gives her a look so dark she nearly backs away from the force of it. "You are playing with forces beyond your ken, you mortal whore," he hisses. "You will release me this instant or my vengeance will follow you-"

" _You_  will fix  _Thor_  or New York's vengeance is going to scar you for the rest of your very long life. The choice is yours."

The truth is, she's bluffing.  _So much_. Not that she wouldn't do it. Frankly, she's tempted to do it even if he does fix Thor. The problem is that she can't. She's not even really sure how to take pictures with her phone. She knows it  _can_  thanks to Tony's many lectures on the subject, but she doesn't know how to get it to, much less put those up on the internet.

Thankfully, Loki doesn't know that.

He huffs and settles into the asphalt. "If I release him, you will release me?"

"Yes."

"You strike a hard bargain, Jane Foster." He makes a vague gesture in the direction of north-west. "It is done."

Probably the only thing Jane knows how to do with her phone is use it as an actual phone. She hits Thor's number almost before Loki's done talking. Thor picks up on the second ring.

"Jane?" He sounds breathless and maybe a little weak, but relieved too.

"Thor?" she asks, clutching the phone close and turning her back on Loki. "Are you okay? Did- can you let it go?"

"Yes," he answers immediately. "The pretender hammer has released me. Jane, what have you done?" He sounds a little bit worried, but also a little bit impressed.

"I'll tell you later, just- don't summon Mjolnir, okay?" She glances down at Loki, who's scowling at her. "And maybe Tony could give you a ride to pick up Loki?"

"We had a deal, mortal!" Loki yells. He tries to reach for her or kick her but seems to realize how pathetic that looks and stops. 

"And I'll still let you up. Just not until Thor gets here." She backs away from him, just to be safe, and sits on the nearest bit of unbroken curb.

"You have bested Loki?" Thor asks with a laugh in his voice.

"Kinda. He was gonna kill a couple kids and Mjolnir was right there, what was I supposed to do?"

Now Thor really does laugh. "Ah, how I wish I could have seen you, Jane."

"Me too." She pulls her legs up to her chest. "Hey, do you mind-" It's silly and stupid and she should really be letting him go so he can tell the others he's fine.

"What would you have me do?" If anyone else asked that question - especially in the state Thor's in now - it'd probably sound tired and a little annoyed. He just sounds eager to do whatever she asks.

"Could you leave your phone on?" She ignores Loki's dramatic eye roll and his angry mutters. "Just so I can hear you?"

"Of course. I shall be with you soon."

"'Kay. Okay." She holds the phone close to her ear, savoring the sound of his voice.


End file.
